[laurablue]

Hi - I'm new here - thanks in advance for your help! My husband and I are working on our homestudy documentation now. A couple years ago we did some IVF cycles (2 fresh, 2 frozen). After my last frozen I decided that I was DONE with medical stuff, and making that decision was so freeing! We've been excited about adoption and are plunging in.

The wrinkle: My sister-in-law, a generous soul with 2 kids of her own, offered to be a surrogate for us, out of the blue. So I called my IVF doctor and he said we have 6 frozen embryos, and since there was never a proven reason why the IVF did not work, we don't know if the issue was my uterus or my eggs. He advised me to try another frozen IVF cycle with ME as the carrier, before even getting involved with surrogacy.

So now I have a dilemma. Do I give up the peace of my decision and dive back into the medical tornado, so that I can try to give my 6 frozen embryos some life? Do I ignore his advice and let my sister-in-law try to be a surrogate for these 6 frozen embryos? Or do I say thanks, but no thanks - we're adopting.

Why would I not try with these frozen ones? Why would I not let my sister-in-law try? Shouldn't I take every chance possible to have our own biological child? I thought I'd answered these questions but now everything from a couple years ago is coming back!

I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks!!

[Suziebearhugs]

I think it would be great if you could give those last 6 embryo's a chance at life.

I'd probably give it one more try yourself first and then have your sister in law give it a try (if you don't want to do it a second time).

At least your mind will be at peace and you could move on from there, knowing you had exhausted all options and given all of your embryo's a chance at life.

Or you could always adopt first and then follow up with those last embryo's at a later date.

[ashmill]

I am in a similar situation to you....

I have four frozen embryos and again like you we don't know if it is my uterus or my eggs.

We have decided to adopt and then go back to the embryos after we are blessed with a child. At this point I don't think I can return to IVF emotionally. It really took a toll on me and dh.

I just feel our family will be complete with a child no matter where he/she comes from. I don't believe in discarding the embryos so we will eventually transfer them but probably after our adoption is done.

Good Luck with your decision. I know how hard it is...

Ashleigh

[minibus]

I think that you have to decide if you'll regret it if you don't give it a chance. That's what made the decision for me to stop ART and move to adoption. I finally came to the point where I knew that I wouldn't regret the decision. If you have doubts, give yourself some time to decide. Best of luck to you!

[cbrink7]

I would do it so there are never any what ifs later on. We never had any frozen so it was a pretty easy (and freeing ) decisions to walk away from medical stuff. Not to impose my views about embryos but to me those are potential children in my mind so I personally would not want to walk away from that. We got pregnant with IVF
(unfortunately they were born prematurely at 20 weeks) but those little 8 cell embryos were definitely my sons from day one.

Now about surrogacy you need to do what is in your heart about that not what your doctor suggests. Go with your gut on that one!

Good Luck!

[laurablue]

Thanks to everyone for the thoughts! I've pretty much decided not to do any more ART myself - so go right to surrogacy if that's our path. I'm with user ashmill - I just can't go through any more IVFs.

So now, it's a matter of deciding if we want to put adoption on hold and try with our surrogate or not. I'm a bit nervous to put the adoption on hold because I'm 35 and my husband is 39, and I feel like we're getting to the point where we'll almost be too old... not that my possible surrogate is getting any younger either!!

And then - if the frozens don't work, do I go through another retrieval? I'd most likely have more frozens b/c I produce a lot of eggs, so then this could be a vicious cycle.

Such a hard decision!

[Cjmeck]

Both my best friend and my younger sister offered to be a surrogate for us. But ultimately, it just came down to my deepest, gut feeling. And my heart lead me straight to adoption I also felt that huge freeing feeling; such RELIEF to walk away from the IF rollercoaster. I was sooooo done with that. Will you always regret not trying again? Will that feeling of "what if" bother you? What does your husband think? If she hadn't made this offer, would you have sought out independent surrogacy? What are your fears about adoption? I guess those are the questions I asked myself when we were at our crossroads last summer. My God am I grateful I listened to that little voice in my head.

Goodluck!

[HollyMack]

This really isn't a matter of whether you have embies or not, whether you have a surrogate or not...in my mind it comes down to how important having a biological child is to you. There is no right or wrong answer. There is just an answer that works for you.

I did 3 fresh/5 frozen IVFs. I had 3 chemicals. (Well, really 4, but my RE doesn't count the one where my beta was very low...) I was d-o-n-e. My husband and I were both over it. The appointments, the roller coaster, the medications, so much time and money and effort spent on NOTHING.

We HAD to use all of our embyros before moving on (we did a Shared Risk IVF contract and couldn't get our $ back until all of the embryos had been used), so I can't say for sure what I would do in your position.

I hope that you find peace with whatever decision you make - best wishes. I know these decisions are HARD.

[linda512]

I feel for you. I did 2 rounds of IVF before moving to adoption. I did not have any frozen embies so that wasn't an issue. BUt the rounds of IVF (and 5 IUI's before) took an incredible emotional toll on me. THe ups and downs, the waiting, etc, almost killed me. Once I decided to move forward with adoption, I felt like I was assured of being a mother, which was my goal.
Having said that, I continued to mourn the loss of a biological child. It was hard for me to see pregnant women, hear of pregnancies, etc. Once my son was home, that passed for the most part.
So, can you deal with the uncertainty again? Not that adoption is certain, it creates its own roller coaster. Life is always full of what ifs, and only you can decide what you can live with.
My sister-in-law offered to be an egg donor, she is a few years younger than me. I did not take her up on that, I needed to move on to something else with better odds.
Good luck with your decision.

[Magiedcat]

I think it depends on what your goal is: is your goal to be pregnant or to be parents? You know if you go through adoption, you are going to be parents. If your goal is be pregnant, then you should try the IVF again. We went through IVF because I knew that if I didn't at least try, I would regret it later. But after I had tried, I knew I was done with it and my goal was to be a parent...if you think you can emotionally handle the possibility of it not working and losing all your momentum on the adoption front, then try it. But if you can't, then go forward with the adoption. You can always come back to the IVF.

Good luck...I know this is a tough decision.

[aclee]

DH and I never ventured into any ART treatments. Plain old Clomid and Metformin did me in...I deal with a lot of medical stuff with my auto immune disease and even though I was "Promised" by the RE (and he says, I'll promise and I never make promises) that I can get you pregnant, I had just had enough. Like others have said, Being pregnant would have been the logical route (since that's what most do!) but I really wanted to be a parent. My sister offered to surrogate for us, but again, the pregnancy, or the biology wasn't what we were longing for. We were longing to be parents. There was also the whole family dynamic that I considered and also that I think a LOT of wonderful, kind hearted women see other women they are close to struggling, and offer that surrogacy option without really understand how extreme it is, and emotional and physical commitment that it is...more even than the pregnancy (and the higher chance of multiples and all that!). So for us, we just said we were all set, we were adopting. When you talk of that freeing feeling...I totally get it. I think I cried tears of joy the day I threw out all my schedule trackers and put away the fertility monitor and testing strips and all that jazz. We wanted a sure thing!

For me, if you have found peace in your decision, stick with it. I think the longer they are frozen the less viable the embroys potentially are, but the surrogacy option isn't a do now or never either right? You could certainly adopt, and then if you have regrets, you could try that later...or if it's the "life" frozen issue, you could donate them too. Do what gives you peace, and makes your dreams come true! If you want to be done with ART (cause let's face it, if it's you, or it's her, you'll still be "going through it") then adopt. If you have it in you to go another round, go for it.